Duncton Wood Page 60

  ‘Well?’ asked Bracken.

  Bran laughed and shrugged. ‘He says that she thinks that Mandrake will come back,’ he said.

  Bracken had never actually said Mandrake was dead and now was even less sure what to say. But Boswell got him out of the difficulty.

  ‘Take us to her,’ he said gently.

  ‘But we need to rest, to sleep…’ complained Bran.

  ‘Take us,’ Boswell repeated, saying the words to Celyn, who seemed to understand and got up to lead the way forward again.

  * * *

  The second journey consumed several molehours more and took them into tunnels whose size and appearance was more fearful than anything a Duncton mole could ever have imagined. The slate walls began to tower higher and higher above them, the floor to widen so broadly that it was sometimes hard to make out the far side. To keep a straight track they had to stay close to one wall, though that was difficult sometimes because the continual running of water down the walls had created great pools on the floor, which was made of slate flakes rather than soil. In several places great tunnels entered the one they were travelling down and there was the continual sound of the running of underground streams and even in one place of some subterranean waterfall. The quality of the echo became deep and sonorous so that even the smallest paw sound seemed made by a giant mole.

  ‘What moles burrowed these?’ asked Bracken in awe at one point, his voice echoing harshly into the distance.

  ‘Not moles,’ said Bran. ‘This is not the work of moles.’

  In some places there were great chambers of slate, higher than a hill, taller than the biggest beech tree, and littered about the flat, lifeless floors were twisted, jagged shapes of rusting metal such as they had seen sometimes near where roaring owls ran. The air was chill with a death that had been dead many generations before.

  ‘She lives here?’ asked Bracken.

  ‘No, this is just a quick way to reach her when there’s too much wet on the surface above. But we’re nearly there, see,’ said Bran.

  Celyn led them round another great chamber that echoed to the clatter of their paws on the slaty floor, then through a blissful mole-sized crack in the rock that sloped steeply upwards but down which fresh cold air streamed. They scrambled up through the muck of slate fragments and muddy, fallen vegetation, scrabbling through sodden peat particles and back to near the surface into a proper tunnel, obviously mole-burrowed. Then out on to the surface, where the evening was beginning to form in the angry grey sky. They could see Siabod more clearly now, nearer and more massive; more jagged, too, with black buttresses of rock jutting out and disrupting the smoother profile they had first seen and obscuring all but the highest part of the summit itself, over which grey mist lingered.

  Then down into another tunnel, along for a quarter of a molemile, and into the tunnels of a damp and dismal little system that reminded Bracken of Curlew’s burrows in what had once been the Marsh End.

  ‘It’s Celyn and Bran, Gwynbach,’ called Bran. ‘And some friends for you to meet.’

  They rounded a corner, went to a burrow entrance, and Celyn, signalling them to stop, entered. They heard him talking in Siabod and the murmur of a reply from a cracked and aged voice through which ran an edge as sharp as the thinnest of slate flakes. Celyn came out and beckoned Boswell and Bracken inside the burrow.

  Y Wrach was crouched in a nest of dried matgrass and heather, and what pale fur she still had on her ancient body was grey and worn with age. Her face was contorted into a thousand wrinkles and her talons were short and worn—one had gone altogether—and their colour was translucent grey rather than black. Her eyes were closed, blind and running, and Bracken noticed that her back paws were swollen out of shape by some disease or complains that came with age. But her head movements were quick and acute, and she beckoned first Boswell and then Bracken over to her, seeming to know exactly where they crouched. She snouted at each one of them, running a paw over Boswell, lingering for a moment at his crippled paw and then pushing him away, turning to Bracken, whom she examined in the same way. He shuddered at her touch, which was like the caress of disease, but he noticed that Boswell was looking intently at her, compassion and warmth in his eyes—and more than that, respect.

  ‘Pa waddod ydych, sy’n ddieithriaid yma? Dywedwch yn eich geiriau eich hunain a siaredwch o’r galon.’

  ‘She wants to know who you are and for you to tell her yourselves,’ said Bran.

  ‘Well, I’m not sure that we ought to tell her everything…’ As Bracken hesitated and stumbled over his words, Boswell quietly interrupted him, speaking to Celyn and ignoring Bran.

  ‘Where shall we begin?’ he asked.

  Celyn hesitated and then, to Bracken’s surprise, broke into mole, which he spoke very well though with a harsher accent than Bran.

  ‘Tell her what’s in your heart. She will know it, anyway. I will translate.’

  There was something almost ritualistic about the way Boswell set about telling their story—quite unlike the matter-of-fact approach Bracken used. First he settled himself down comfortably, close to Y Wrach, closing his eyes for a short while almost as if he were praying or invoking some power he felt the occasion warranted. To his surprise, Bracken saw that the ancient mole started to do the same, the two of them engaged in a kind of crouching mutual trance.

  Finally Boswell said, softly, ‘What I shall say is from my heart to your heart, told with the truth the Stone itself put there, and which I shall try to honour.’ He paused briefly, and Y Wrach nodded slightly, her snout bowed and her head a little on one side.

  ‘My name is Boswell, scribemole of Uffington, who has journeyed here for many long moleyears, through winter and snow, with news you have waited for for far longer than that. May the Stone give you strength to receive it.’

  He paused between each sentence so Celyn could translate, and imperceptibly Bran and Bracken retreated into the further shadows of the burrow as Boswell and Y Wrach began their talk, almost as if it were private. Even Celyn soon seemed to fade away, his voice speaking the words of one to the other as if he himself were not there, so that soon it was just Boswell and the old female talking alone together.

  ‘The mole I have come with, who brought me safely here, is Bracken from Duncton which, like Siabod, is one of the Great Systems. Nomole may be trusted more.’ Y Wrach nodded gently, snouting over towards the shadows where Bracken crouched in silence.

  ‘I will tell you of Mandrake, the mole of Siabod; I will tell you of changes that nomole may judge. I will ask you a favour of the great Stones of Siabod… ’ So Boswell began to tell their story, speaking in the traditional rhythmic way of scribemoles for whom truth is more important than time or effect, and who speak as moles can only ever truly speak, from one heart to another.

  When Celyn reached the name of Mandrake in his translation, Y Wrach sighed very slightly and seemed to mutter to herself, peering blindly at Boswell and then round at the rest of them in the burrow, seeming suddenly to find more strength in her body and to hold herself more and more erect. Her face bore the pride of a difficult promise fulfilled. She spoke a few words in Siabod which Celyn translated almost as she spoke them.

  ‘Alas, Boswell, that you are not a female, for then, perhaps, there would be less need of words. Tell me of Mandrake whom I saved on the mountain, tell me it all and I will tell you its truth.’

  So Boswell began the tale, telling of Duncton and of all Mandrake did there. Telling of Rebecca and speaking of Rune, sometimes softly referring to Bracken for details that he did not know or could not remember having been told.

  Until at last, in a voice as hushed as night-time snow, he told of the fight by the Stone and of the death of Mandrake.

  There was a sigh from Y Wrach as he told of this and a shaking of her old lined head. Then Boswell continued, telling of the seventh Stillstone, of the death of Skeat, of the plague, and of all the things that had happened to bring them to Siabod. As he spoke, Bracken saw for the
first time that, looked at in the way Boswell had told them, all these things were linked to Mandrake. But then he thought that in another way they were linked to Rebecca, or to Boswell, or to Uffington. And the Stone. Their story was all one.

  There was a long silence before Y Wrach began in her own turn to speak. As she did so, she seemed to rear up and grow in size, the great slab of slate that formed one side of the burrow seeming to shrink behind her, a black backdrop to her grey and wrinkled form. She spoke in a singsong voice, different from the one she had first spoken in, and the words seemed to come not from her but through her, from a different generation of moles and from a mole who was young and speaking reluctantly through a body that had nearly done with life:

  ‘Hen wyf i, ni’th oddiweddaf…

  Crai fy mryd rhag gofd haint…

  Gorddyar adar; gwlyb naint.

  Llewychyd lloer; oer dewaint.’

  ‘Ancient am I, and do not comprehend you…

  I am wasted from painful disease…

  Loud are birds; streams wet,

  The moon shines; midnight is cold.’

  The Siabod she spoke was more rhythmic and musical than that Bracken had first heard from Bran and the other moles down in the valley. And as Celyn’s translation began, her own words seemed to form a wonderful, melodic accompaniment to his own rendering of it, so that the sense came from him, but the power and poetry of sound came from her.

  At first Bracken found it hard to follow what she meant, until he realised that he was not listening to a series of logical ideas or explanations of anything so much as to the outpouring of images and memories from the heart of a mole who had struggled with age for many long moleyears and whose life is better explained by the running of a stream than by the exposition of a scribemole. At the heart of all she said was her faith in Mandrake, or in the life force within him, whose power she believed would not have withered in the dull safety of burrows and tunnels, having survived the blizzard from which she saved him.

  ‘Mandrake, I knew your nature,

  Like the rush of an eagle in estuaries were you.

  Had I been fortunate you could have escaped,

  But my misfortune was your life.

  My heart was withered from longing.

  The buzzard has plunged on the heath,

  Your black fur lost in the slate

  Of Siabod, or the hound’s howls,

  Of Gelert, black as Llyn dur Arddu.

  I am wasted, disease has seized me.

  Mandrake, what part of you hears me?

  For you are coming again

  From the slate where you went,

  Black among shadows. I hear you.

  Wind tosses starry flowers,

  Snow drips among green fern.

  No more will the buzzard see me,

  But I will come in a circle,

  A gyre of triumph; bare like the hill,

  No fur, no grass; weak talons, soft rock.

  This leaf, the wind whips it away.

  Alas for its fate,

  Old, born this year.

  Young, reborn next.

  So will you come back,

  So will I come back,

  So will you know me,

  So will I laugh at the black slate of Siabod,

  Though my heart withered from longing

  In this life that you left me,

  And wind swept the last trees from the mountain.

  So did I laugh in the blizzard that found you.

  Lakes cold, their looks want warmth,

  Ravens scatter in Castell y Gwynt,

  Beak on the ice where your talon went,

  Where the Stone’s silence warned you

  And Tryfan stands still.

  I am wasted with melancholy tonight

  That I was not there with you,

  Nor can ever be. Another will go

  And you will come back.

  Let the Stones see another

  In Castell y Gwynt

  Where the winds howl through cracks

  But Tryfan stands still.’

  As the chanting music of her voice fell away, Celyn spoke the final words and then there was a long silence, Bracken never taking his eyes from her as the images she had invoked of age, and of quest, and of Mandrake, to whom she spoke as if he were still alive, melded in his mind and soared to the Stones of Siabod where he knew he must go.

  But most of all he felt her love for Mandrake and her sense that in some way she, who had saved him, had yet failed him. And in hearing her speak, and understanding this truth behind her words, he understood at last Rebecca’s love for Mandrake, which was the same. He remembered again, as he had so many times, that terrible cry by Mandrake when he was by the Stone, a cry he had heard but not known how to listen to. How can a mole answer such anguish? Where does he find the strength? So he looked on Y Wrach anew and wondered if there was anything that he might say to her, anything that would bring her some comfort.

  ‘Tell her about Rebecca,’ he said suddenly, his voice breaking the silence. And then, turning to Celyn, he said, ‘Did you tell her?’

  ‘She knows,’ said Boswell softly, and Celyn nodded.

  ‘No,’ said Bracken, ‘I mean you must tell her I love her,’ for he knew it was the only way of letting this mole, who had waited so long, know that there was something of Mandrake that another mole loved.

  ‘Tell her,’ said Bracken to Celyn.

  Celyn spoke softly to Y Wrach, who put out to him an aged paw which he held in his own before she turned and faced Bracken directly. Then she came over to him slowly, her back paws moving with difficulty, and touched his paw with her own.

  ‘Dywedwch wrthyf sut un ydi Rebecca!’ she said softly.

  Bracken looked over to Celyn for a translation.

  ‘She says “Tell me what Rebecca is like”,’ he said.

  Bracken looked at Y Wrach and wondered what he should say, what he could say. She was like… she was like…

  ‘She is full of love and her fur is thick and glossy grey. She is big for a female but graceful as a rush in the wind. Her laughter is like sunshine. Life flows through her and she is powerful with it, and moles are afraid of the life she has but they come to her because they need it… ’ He trailed off into silence and Celyn’s soft translation came to an end soon after and there was silence among them.

  Bracken wondered at what he had said, because he had never thought those thoughts before about Rebecca. Was he afraid of her himself? Was it simply the life she had that he wanted?

  He wanted to carry on speaking to Y Wrach but felt embarrassed with Celyn and Bran and Boswell there, and uncertain of his feelings. He tried to think himself back to the Stillstone with Rebecca, but it seemed too far away, so long ago, that it had happened to another mole. He wanted to cry. He wanted to sigh. He wanted Y Wrach to hold him. He wanted Rebecca.

  ‘I love her,’ he mumbled, and Celyn repeated the words in Siabod. Y Wrach smiled and then looked a little fierce and then said something to him.

  ‘She says she knows you love Mandrake’s child Rebecca,’ said Celyn, ‘and that one day you may know it too.’

  Then Y Wrach began speaking again, though not in the chant she had used before.

  ‘I did not want him to go, and warned him against it,’ repeated Celyn, once more translating her words, ‘but you who never saw him then, nor ever watched him grow, can perhaps not understand the power that he had. The sky and the wind were in his fur, and though black clouds raced there, the sun lit its way as well. He had a power of life before which I saw that sad and empty Siabod, the system that you call one of the seven great systems, was but the carcass of a crow dashed against slate cliffs by a cold wind.

  ‘They grew angry that I would not let him see the Stone crushed between the dead talons of their rituals or join their hopeless song. I told him that the Stone soars on Castell y Gwynt, not in these slated, wormless tunnels now fittingly punished by plague.

  ‘But he grew to hate me a
s he hated them, and sought to mock us all by going there. Yet I knew that even Gelert, Hound of Siabod, could not rob him of his life; none could or ever will.’

  ‘But he’s dead now,’ said Boswell softly, Celyn saying the words back to her.

  She shook her head and laughed, her first laugh among them, a laugh as stunted but strong as hillside gorse.

  ‘You have things to learn, Boswell. And you,’ she turned unerringly towards Bracken and raised an ancient paw at him. ‘You have things to learn, and things you must do, you who say you love Mandrake’s child.’ She came forward slowly to Bracken and touched him, and this time her touch was like a warm, rippling breeze on his fur and he knew that she knew all that was inside him.

  ‘You may have to lose her, Bracken of Duncton, before you find her. Just like I lost my Mandrake. And found him.’

  With this final mystery, which threw only fear into Bracken’s heart, she fell silent and Celyn signalled that they should leave her.

  They saw her only once more, two days later, when she led them to the end of her tunnels, to the edge of a massive drop down into the quarried cliffs that, in the distance, edged the precipitous slopes up towards Siabod.

  She snouted blindly over this precipice for some time before saying, ‘The way on to Moel Siabod lies through there by the cliffs of Cwm-oer. Beyond it, though nomole now knows them, stand the Stones you seek, and Tryfan, which you will never reach.’ She waved a paw over the slopes to her right. ‘Over there, as I remember too well, is a way back from these depths, but nomole may climb it—only tumble down.’

  The ground she pointed over was rough rock, with a few fragments of starved vegetation—frail parsley fern and battered bilberry—that rose steeply along the edge of the quarry and in the distance met its far heights.

  ‘Up there, in a blizzard, was Mandrake born and there did I find him: a place for herring gull or crow or the dance of a fritillary in summer, but not for mole.’

  She turned back to the grim depths of slate below them, which rose far into the distance in a jumble of massed rock fragments and forgotten ruins.